Nasa probe discovers mysterious hurricane on Saturn

Nasa has revealed first close-up pictures of a giant vortex swirling around
Saturn's north pole.

Scientists have discovered a hurricane on Saturn that is 20 times larger and four times faster than the average hurricane on Earth.

"We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale."

The massive storm is believed to have been churning for years but Nasa's probe was only able to photograph it when the planet's north pole emerged from the darkness of its polar winter.

Scientists will now be studying the hurricane to gain better insight into hurricanes on Earth. The Saturnian storms could tell scientists more about how terrestrial hurricanes are generated and sustained.